Tuesday, September 30, 2014

As a piece of film art, The Abdication has moments of tremendous
beauty. Cinematographer Geoffrey Unsworth’s imagery is simultaneously delicate
and spectacular, because while he captures the story’s 17th-century settings
with ornately lit panoramas that suggest classic paintings, he also conveys a
sense of intimacy by accentuating the way people can be dwarfed by their
surroundings. Similarly, composer Nino Rota’s stately music pulses with
compassion, majesty, and warmth. And then there’s the story itself, which
dramatizes a unique chapter from history—the period when Sweden’s tormented
Queen Christina gave up her throne, and left her Protestant country, in order
to become a Catholic. Written with great intelligence and sensitivity by Ruth
Wolff, adapting her own play of the same name, The Abdication is ambitious, serious, and worthy. Unfortunately,
it’s not particularly entertaining, and neither is it especially satisfying. Part of the problem is director Anthony Harvey’s leaden pacing, and part of the
problem is that both leading players give insular performances. Playing
Christina, the great Swedish actress Liv Ullmann captures moods ranging from
caprice to combativeness, but, like her character, Ullmann holds too many cards
close to her vest The true heart of the movie’s vision of Christina becomes
visible only in glimpses, a problem exacerbated by the story’s intricate
structure. Wolff organizes the narrative like a courtroom drama, so Cardinal
Azzolino (Peter Finch) spends the whole movie interrogating Christina, under
orders from the Vatican to determine the validity of her conversion. Accordingly, most of the key moments in Christina’s life are shown in
fragmented flashbacks, culminating with a sequence during which Christina
addresses widespread rumors that she was romantically involved with another
woman. Concurrently, Wolff explores historical innuendo by implying that
Azzolino and Christina became lovers, spiritually if not necessarily
physically. The material is so interesting that it should work, and Finch is at
least Ullmann’s equal. Yet it all feels chaste and flat and polite—so much so
that The Abdication becomes boring
after a while. Even the scenes of Vatican officials debating Christina’s
political significance—which should be incendiary—feel overly mannered.
Students of religious and/or royal history will undoubtedly find more to enjoy
here than general viewers, and it’s inarguable that The Abdication is a sophisticated piece of work. Nonetheless, a
sterile approach to storytelling prevents The
Abdication from realizing its own tremendous potential.

Monday, September 29, 2014

A lesser offering from the
live-action arm of Walt Disney Productions, The
Cat from Outer Space features the tepid mixture of science fiction and
slapstick that was all too common among the company’s ’70s offerings. The
filmmakers try to enliven a fundamentally uninteresting premise by bludgeoning viewers
with elaborate production values, familiar character actors, and laborious
plotting—yet it’s hard to know which exactly which audience the people at
Disney had in mind for this one. The main plot is silly nonsense about an
alien, who happens to look like an ordinary housecat, enlisting the help of
earthlings in order to repair his spaceship, while at the same time avoiding
capture by soldiers and by a crime boss who wants to use the alien’s technology
for nefarious purposes. However, a major subplot revolves around a hard-drinking compulsive
gambler and his attempts to defraud bookies and gangsters by using the
aforementioned technology in order to change the outcomes of sporting events.
And then there’s the requisite infantile love story, because the cat’s main
human accomplice is a nerdy scientist who can’t find the courage to court the
coworker he loves. The gambling stuff and the romantic material would seem to
be of little interest to very young viewers, and yet it’s hard to imagine
grown-ups tolerating endless scenes of special-effects tomfoolery. (Picture
lots of objects and people levitating.) Making matters worse, The Cat from Outer Space is dull and
flat, despite fairly brisk pacing, simply because the character work and
storytelling are so perfunctory. By the time the movie lurches into a
convoluted rescue sequence at the end, all traces of charm and novelty have
disappeared. Anyway, the picture does boast an eclectic cast of comedy
professionals, each of whom does what he or she can with the script’s limp
gags. Actors appearing in The Cat from
Outer Space include Ken Berry, Hans Conreid, Sandy Duncan, James Hampton, Roddy McDowall, Harry Morgan, and McLean Stevenson—yes, that’s two commanding
officers from the classic sitcom M*A*S*H
for the price of one.

Sunday, September 28, 2014

Seeing as how it was
released at a time when mainstream attitudes toward homosexuality were rooted
in ignorance and prejudice, the amiable comedy Norman . . . Is That You? is fairly progressive. The film was based
upon the play Norman, Is That You?, by
Sam Bobrick and Ron Clark, which premiered in 1970—yet punctuation within the
title wasn’t the only change made during the transition from stage to screen.
Both versions of the story depict a conservative couple’s discovery that their
adult son is gay. On stage, the characters are white and Jewish, but in the
film, the characters are African-American. Realizing how easily the material
applies to both populations underscores the play’s themes of inclusiveness and
understanding. Yet Norman, by any
name, isn’t a high-minded call for tolerance. Rather, it’s a light comedy that
merely happens to concern characters broadening their horizons.

The film
begins, somewhat clumsily, with a scene of Ben Chambers (Redd Foxx) riding on a
bus while Smokey Robinson’s voice appears on the soundtrack, crooning a dull
song about Chambers being an “old-fashioned man living in a brand-new world.”
To hammer the point home, Ben winces every time he sees a hippie. The movie settles
into a better groove once Ben reaches the Los Angeles apartment of his son,
Norman (Michael Warren). Surprised by his father’s visit, Norman shoos away his
effeminate live-in boyfriend, Garson (Dennis Dugan). But while Norman tries to
act “normally” around his father—who explains that Norman’s mother just ran off with Ben’s brother—Garson eavesdrops until
he can insert himself into the situation. Then, shortly after Norman leaves for
work, Garson reveals that he and Norman are lovers. The highlight of the
picture is a long sequence during which Garson tries to charm Ben into
acceptance by acting like the perfect host for a night on the town. In the
movie’s most quintessentially ’70s moment, Garson takes Ben to see a gay-themed
ventriloquism show featuring Garson’s pal Larry and Larry’s camp-queen
puppet—played by fleeting TV stars Walyand Flowers and Madam. Eventually,
costar Pearl Bailey joins the action as Ben’s wayward wife, Beatrice,
triggering lots of bickering-spouse routines between Bailey and Foxx.

Mild but
tart jokes fly freely throughout Norman .
. . Is That You?, but they mostly hit their targets. For instance, after
Ben argues that Beatrice has unreal expectations by saying, “I didn’t marry you
to entertain you,” she fires back, “I knew that after the first week.” Similarly,
Garson promises Ben a fun visit: “You’re going to love Los Angeles, it’s full
of surprises—just look in any closet.” Mostly, however, what keeps Norman . . . Is That You? watchable is
the combination of Foxx’s expert comic timing and the script’s characterization
of Ben as a square who needs to get hip about changing times. FYI, Norman is the only theatrical feature directed by prolific TV
producer George Schlatter, best known for co-creating the seminal 1968-1973 variety
show Laugh-In.

Saturday, September 27, 2014

Even though England’s
Hammer Films was the undisputed leader in the vampire-movie business during the
’60s and ’70s, low-rent U.S. outfits including American International Pictures
still ventured into the realm of bloodsuckers. For instance, AIP’s Count Yorga, Vampire did well enough to
warrant a sequel, though it’s plain both films are feeble attempts at
Americanizing the Hammer formula.

Written and directed by the singularly
unimpressive George Kelljan, Count Yorga,
Vampire takes place in modern-day California, where ancient European
vampire Count Yorga (Robert Quarry) has taken up residence. For reasons that
are never clear, Yorga works as a part-time mystic, so he’s introduced leading
a séance for several young people. Then, after two séance participants drive
the count home and get stuck on his property, Yorga attacks them. One of the
victims, Erica (Judith Lang), shows wounds on her neck and develops monstrous
behavior, such as eating her cat, so the heroes, led by stalwart Dr. Jim Hayes
(Roger Perry), figure out Yorga must be a vampire. One of cinema history’s
least exciting showdowns ensues, largely comprising an interminable scene of
Dr. Hayes chatting with Yorga in order to keep the vampire awake until sunrise.
Dull, talky, and unimaginative, Count
Yorga, Vampire features such amateurish flaws as a high percentage of
out-of-focus shots and some truly inept acting by second- and third-string cast
members. That said, Quarry has an enjoyable way of injecting condescension into
all of his line readings, and costar Michael Murphy—who later became a go-to
actor for Woody Allen and Robert Altman—lends credibility to his scenes.

The Return of Count Yorga shows
considerable improvement in the areas of acting, since even the bit players are
competent this time, and cinematography, since future Jaws cinematographer Bill Butler generates the visuals. Alas, the
pacing and storyline of the sequel—once again directed by Kelljan—are as
lifeless as those of the first picture. Set at a coastal orphanage and a nearby
castle, which happens to be Yorga’s new crash pad, the movie offers a feeble
explanation for the titular vampire’s revival following the climax of the first
picture. Yorga becomes infatuated with a pretty orphanage employee, Cynthia
(Mariette Hartley), so he and his vampire brides slaughter Cynthia’s family,
and then Yorga hypnotizes Cynthia into believing her relatives are traveling
while she “recuperates” in his castle. Meanwhile, cops and a friendly
neighborhood priest discover what’s really happening. After lots and lots of
preliminary chit-chat, the good guys converge on Castle Yorga to effect a
rescue. Oddly, several cast members from Count
Yorga, Vampire appear in the sequel, though many of them play different
roles.

While many sequences in The Return
of Count Yorga are almost unbearably boring, redeeming qualities appear
periodically. Hartley is appealingly earnest, future Poltergeist star Craig T. Nelson shows up in a smallish role as a
cop, cameo player George Macready does a fun bit as some sort of aging
voodoo-hippie scholar, and Quarry elevates his performance style to full-on
camp. Butler’s moody imagery helps a great deal, though his work is stronger
during evocative exterior scenes than during the interior scenes that Kelljan
orchestrates clumsily.

Friday, September 26, 2014

Offering a painstakingly
detailed dramatization of the notorious “Manson Family” murders and their
aftermath, the made-for-TV movie Helter
Skelter features, among many other worthwhile things, one of the creepiest
performances of the ’70s. Playing wild-eyed cult leader Charles Manson, Steve
Railsback delivers indelible work. With his gaunt frame, quavering voice,
and relentless intensity, he captures the real Manson’s disturbing mixture of messianic
charisma and psychopathic menace. Even though he’s probably onscreen for only
one hour of Helter Skelter’s original
three-hour-and-twenty-minute running time, Railsback dominates the whole
project. Watching Railsback-as-Manson preach about the beauty of an impending
race war and the glory of rattling the establishment by committing mass murder
feels very much like looking into the eyes of pure madness.

Based on a
nonfiction book cowritten by Manson prosecutor Charles Bugliosi, who secured
convictions against the cult leader and several of his accomplices despite the
rigors of a complex trial, Helter Skelter
gives equal weight to the activities of law-enforcement personnel and to the macabre exploits of
the killers. Moreover, the movie blurs lines by showing the occasional
ineptitude of people investigating the murders, and by showing the twisted joy
Manson’s people took from following a man they considered to be a reincarnation
of Jesus Christ. If there’s a major flaw to the project, it’s the way that Bugliosi is portrayed as a superhero in a three-piece suit, making
logical connections that evade other people, rendering impassioned courtroom
speeches, and standing up to the formidable Manson during one-on-one
encounters. Rose-colored as the movie’s vision of Bugliosi may be, the
portrayal ultimately works in the project’s favor because the straight-laced
Bugliosi represents the order of The Establishment, while Manson and his people
represent the chaos of the counterculture’s lunatic fringe.

Produced and
directed by Tom Gries, whose filmogrpahy includes such robust action pictures
as 100 Rifles (1969) and Breakheart Pass (1975), Helter Skelter unfolds in a
quasi-documentary style. As narration and title cards provide connective
tissue, the picture shows episodes involving cops, criminals, witnesses, and
victims, eventually replicating the intricate tapestry of clues and leads and
mistakes and victories that led to Manson’s conviction. The investigative stuff
is compelling because of how many near-misses occurred before the Manson Family
was finally incarcerated, and the courtroom stuff—much of which features speech
taken directly from transcripts—is dynamite. The extensive testimony of former
Family member Linda Kasabian (Marily Burns) shows what happens when a morally
healthy individual survives a brush with monsters, and the many scenes
featuring killers Leslie Van Houten (Cathey Paine) and Susan Atkins (Nancy
Wolfe) suggest the incredible sway Manson had over compliant followers. Almost
as maddening to watch is Manson’s attorney, Everett Scoville (Howard Caine),
who batters the prosecution with endless objections.

Although Helter Skelter is widely available in a
shortened, feature-length version, the original cut—which was broadcast over
two evenings—has special allure because of how deeply it pulls viewers into a
legal quagmire. In either version, the performances are never less than solid,
even if George DiCenzo’s portrayal of Buglioisi is a bit flat, and the use of
music—including cover versions of the Beatles songs associated with the murders
and a creepy original score by Billy Goldenberg—is wonderfully precise.

Thursday, September 25, 2014

Convoluted circumstances
worked against the makers of Man of La
Mancha, a troubled film adaptation of the enduring stage musical that
premiered in 1964, so it’s no surprise the picture earned enmity during its
original release and has failed to curry much favor during the ensuing years.
Bloated, grim, miscast, old-fashioned, and over-plotted, the picture seems utterly
bereft of whatever charms have captivated fans of the stage version throughout
decades of revivals. Even the picture’s magnificent look, courtesy of
cinematographer Giuseppe Rotunno’s painterly images and enough
production-design eye candy to make Terry Gilliam jealous, is insufficient to
hold the viewer’s attention as Man of La
Mancha lumbers through 132 very long minutes.

Reviewing some of the
tortured history behind the project reveals why it was doomed to mediocrity, if
not outright failure. In 1959, CBS broadcast a dramatic play for television
titled I, Don Quixote, written by
Dale Wasserman. In the story, which is set during the Spanish Inquisition,
author Miguel de Cervantes gets thrown in jail and put on “trial” by his fellow
inmates. Then he defends himself by describing his in-progress novel, Don Quixote, about a madman who thinks
he’s a knight. All of this material, of course, was a riff on the real book Don Quixote, written by the real
Cervantes. After the TV broadcast, Wasserman was invited to transform the play
into a musical. Hence Man of La Mancha.
A trip to the big screen seemed inevitable, given the success of the musical
and the ubiquity of the musical’s theme song, “The Impossible Dream.” (Everyone
from Cher to Frank Sinatra to the Temptations had a go at the song while Man of La Mancha was still on Broadway,
and it briefly became a staple of Elvis Presley’s act.) Actors, directors, and
producers dropped in and out of the project while debates raged about whether
or not to include the music.

When the dust settled, journeyman director Arthur
Hiller inherited a cast featuring James Coco (as Cervantes/Quixote’s sidekick),
Sophia Loren (as the hero’s love interest), and Peter O’Toole (as
Cervantes/Quixote). O’Toole was many things, but a singer was not one of them,
so the die was pretty much cast when he was given the lead role. O’Toole is potent
in the film’s dramatic scenes, speechifying gloriously about dreams and honor,
but it’s irritating to watch him lip-sync while John Gilbert’s voice flows on
the soundtrack. Equally frustrating is watching Loren struggle with her singing
chores, since her voice lacks beauty and singularity.

And then there’s the
jumbled storyline. The sequences in the dungeon require much suspension of
disbelief, and the play-within-a-play bits are weirdly stylized—some exterior
scenes were filmed on location, while others were shot on a soundstage with glaringly
fake backdrops. Once the play-within-a-play gets mired in messy subplots during
the middle of the movie, Man of La Mancha
goes off the rails completely, resulting in tedium. The filmmakers would have
been better served by a bolder choice—either diving wholeheartedly into musical
terrain by presenting something as chipper and treacly as the music, or veering
all the way back to Wasserman’s dramatic source material. Hell, even making a
straightforward film of Don Quixote,
with the same cast, would have been preferable. Man of La Mancha isn’t an excruciating mess, like so many other
overwrought musicals of the same era, but it’s a mess nonetheless.

Wednesday, September 24, 2014

Stupidity reigns in Start the Revolution Without Me, a goofy
riff on the French Revolution—and not just because the movie’s version of Louis
XVI is a dolt preoccupied with his clock collection. Directed by Bud Yorkin and
produced by Norman Lear—the formidable combo behind several big-budget comedy
movies but especially known for their spectacular success in television (All in the Family, etc.)—Start the Revolution Without Me features
a frenetically paced combination of farce, satire, slapstick, and verbal
comedy. Most of the humor is broad, gentle, and obvious, more on the order of
second-rate Carol Burnett Show gags
than the kind of inspired lunacy that took root in movie comedies a few years
later, following the ascent of Mel Brooks and the Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker
collective.

Among other weak devices, Start
the Revolution Without Me employs chaotic fight scenes filled with
pratfalls, crude jokes about effeminate men, self-reflexive narration, silly
gags predicated on mispronounced words, sped-up photography, and tawdry scenes
of men groping and/or ogling women. Most of this stuff was already considered old-fashioned
in the vaudeville era. Some scenes in Start
the Revolution Without Me almost work, simply because the skills of the
performers trump the shortcomings of the material, and the movie boasts amazing
production values in terms of costumes, locations, and props. Plus, of course,
the movie has Gene Wilder at the height of his powers, as well as an
enthusiastic but miscast Donald Sutherland.

The stars play two sets of twin
brothers. In the convoluted narrative, one pair of brothers is raised poor, and
the other is raised wealthy. Upon reaching adulthood, both pairs are drawn to intrigue
surrounding the French Revolution. Naturally, the poor brothers get mistaken
for the rich brothers, and vice versa, leading to trouble as the poor brothers
exploit their newfound position in Louis XVI’s court, and as the rich brothers
try to escape service in the rebel militia. There’s also a lot of bedroom
comedy involving a character loosely modeled after Marie Antoinette, as well as
a wink-wink framing device during which modern-day Orson Welles (playing
himself) introduces the movie and “tells” the story to the audience.

Costar
Hugh Griffith scores some points playing Louis XVI as a nincompoop, Victor
Spinettii contributes a fun villainous turn in the Harvey Korman mode, and
Billie Whitelaw is alluring as the Antoinette character. Yet Wilder, naturally,
has most of the best scenes—as well as many of the worst—because of his no-prisoners
approach. He’s infinitely better playing the rich brother, since that role
allows for Wilder’s signature psychotic slow burns, and the early running gag
about the rich brother’s affection for the dead falcon he wears on his arm is
pleasantly absurd. Alas, even though Start
the Revolution Without Me has its partisans—the script, by Lawrence J.
Cohen and Fred Freeman, earned a Writers Guild nomination—the movie gets
awfully tiresome after a while. The higher your tolerance for brainless humor,
the longer you’re likely to stay engaged.

Tuesday, September 23, 2014

Thoroughly enjoyable but
also thoroughly silly, the spy thriller When
Eight Bells Toll sprang from the pen of adventure-story specialist Alistair
MacLean, who never allowed logic get in the way of a good yarn. (Previous
MacLean adaptations include 1961’s The
Guns of Navarone and 1968’s Where
Eagles Dare.) Anthony Hopkins stars as Philip Calvert, an operative of the
British Treasury who specializes in underwater work. After several ships
carrying gold shipments are hijacked, Calvert receives orders from government
muckety-muck Sir Arthur Arnford-Jones (Robert Morley) to investigate. Calvert
places a tracking device on the next ship carrying gold, and then he slips
aboard the vessel once it’s hijacked. The criminals are more heavily armed than
expected, so even though Calvert kills a couple of them, he barely escapes.
Nonetheless, he identifies the rough geographic region where the hijackers are
most likely based—the rugged coast off the Scottish highlands—so Calvert
travels to the area incognito, accompanied by intelligence specialist Hunslett
(Corin Redgrave). Then Calvert makes like James Bond while investigating
suspects. Naturally, one of those suspects is a beautiful young woman,
Charlotte (Nathalie Delon), who makes passes at Calvert even though he’s sure
she’s an enemy agent. There’s also a subplot about a group of Scottish shark
fishermen who may or may not be on the wrong side of the law. Along the way,
the picture includes a brawl in a graveyard, a knife fight, an underwater duel
involving a blowtorch, a mountain-climbing sequence, and a massive shootout in
a cave.

Deciphering the plot of When
Eight Bells Toll isn’t worth the trouble—as is true for most pictures
derived from MacLean’s loopy narratives—but the movie is fun to watch. In
addition to employing his superlative dramatic skills, the icy Hopkins is cast
well because his character is a derisive prick—it’s easy to believe that
Calvert could survive in a line of work fraught with danger. Better still,
director Étienne Périer and cinematographer Arthur Ibbertson make fine use of
the film’s Scottish locations. The sky is heavily overcast in nearly every
scene, and the ground looks dirty and wet throughout, so it feels like
Calvert’s facing opposition from the climate as well as from criminals. A
foreboding castle is a principal location, and the movie’s most exciting
sequence features a helicopter crash on a high cliff, followed by a harrowing
bit of Calvert trying to survive underwater in the wrecked chopper while killers
prowl the ocean surface. Reprising a trope common to the spy genre, the
behavior of the villains in When Eight
Bells Toll makes no sense whatsoever, and the hero’s resourcefulness
reaches godlike proportions. This is pure male fantasy, complete with a
rousing, 007-influenced music score by Walter Scott—who, incidentally, later
had a sex change and continued her career under the name Angela Morley.

Monday, September 22, 2014

Credited with having made
over 1,000 features since its formation in 1958, Hong Kong production company
Shaw Brothers has largely focused on domestic product, but the ’70s martial-arts
craze expanded the company’s international reach. That period also found Shaw
Brothers attempting co-productions with companies that were established in
specific genres, hence the dizzyingly weird The
Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires (1974), a kung fu/vampire mashup made with Hammer Films, and this buddy movie set in the Wild West.
Coproduced by Shaw Brothers and Italy-based spaghetti-Western outfit Champion
Films, the picture blends comedy, gun fights, kung fu, and a liberal sprinkling
of sex. Accordingly, The Stranger and the Gunfighter
begins with a truly bizarre sequence. As rootin’-tootin’ outlaw Dakota (Lee Van
Cleef) breaks into a bank vault, he discovers still photographs of naked women.
Close-up shots of the photographs trigger vignettes during which a Chinese
gentleman named Mr. Wang tattoos artwork onto the buttocks of the women in the
photographs. Keep in mind that Dakota doesn’t learn about the tattoos until
later in the movie, so why the vignettes are featured in this scene is a
mystery.

Anyway, Dakota gets captured by authorities and sentenced to death.
Meanwhile in China, Mr. Wang’s nephew, Ho Chiang (Lo Lieh), graduates from kung
fu school, gets into a fight with a gangster, and is told he must travel to
America and recover a fortune that Mr. Wang hid somewhere. Faster than you can
say “plot contrivance,” Ho treks to the U.S. and rescues Dakota from the
hangman’s noose. Then they’re off to find the women in the pictures, since the
tattoos collectively form a treasure map. A crazed preacher chases after Dakota
and Ho, intent on seizing Mr. Wang’s treasure for himself. The plot is mildly
imaginative, in a farcical sort of way, and some of the culture-clash jokes
generate brainless amusement. (For instance, the naïve Ho can’t understand why
Dakota reacts with alarm every time Ho says, “I want to see ass!”)

Furthermore, The Stranger and the Gunfighter moves
along at a decent clip, even though the iffy dubbing common to both
martial-arts films and spaghetti Westerns of the era guarantees a weird
soundtrack. Similarly, the heavy use of comedic music and wacky sound effects
makes action scenes feel cartoonish. On the plus side, there’s so much plot
that the movie doesn’t get overly mired in fighting scenes, the ladies in the
supporting cast are lovely, and the stars are cast well—Lieh blends impressive
martial-arts abilities with childlike sweetness, while Van Cleef ably
personifies a brute whose boastfulness often exceeds his skills. While not
necessarily a standout amid the small subgenre of martial-arts Westerns (which
also includes 1971’s gonzo Red Sun
and the amiable Shanghai pictures of
the 200s starring Jackie Chan and Owen Wilson), The Stranger and the Gunfighter offers a pleasant sampler platter
of sensations from two popular genres.

Sunday, September 21, 2014

Though he probably thought
of himself as an actor in the classical sense, Charlton Heston was inextricably
linked with a florid performance style. Whether he was fighting postapocalpytic
vampires, parting the Red Sea, or telling a damn dirty ape what to do with its
stinking paws, Heston’s best lines were often screamed at ear-splitting volume.
Like Spinal Tap’s customized amps, Heston went to 11. This preamble should
calibrate expectations for Heston’s directorial debut, Antony and Cleopatra, adapted from Shakespeare’s immortal play. The
movie doesn’t work, for myriad reasons, but it speaks to an interesting mixture
of misguided artistic ambition and pure thespian ego. Watching the movie, one
can actually feel how badly Heston wants everything to coalesce.

Set in ancient
Rome and Egypt, the story takes place after the death of Julius Caesar, and it
depicts the tragic romance between Caesar’s second-in-command, Mark Antony
(Heston), and Caesar’s former lover, Queen Cleopatra (Hildegard Neil). When the
tale begins, Antony is part of the triumvirate ruling the Roman empire, but he
becomes so obsessed with Cleopatra that he merges his armies with her forces in
Egypt. War among former allies ensues, and the whole situation is complicated
by Cleopatra’s caprice—although she betrays Antony’s trust more than once, he
keeps returning to her. Quite literally, this is the stuff of legend, so
Heston’s grandiose style isn’t inherently incompatible. Had an experienced
filmmaker taken the reins and kept the star focused on acting, Heston’s
interest in the material could have delivered stronger results.

Alas, Heston
the director is the worst enemy of Heston the leading man. In addition to silly
indulgences, such as gigantic close-ups during macho speeches and a semi-nude
scene showcasing the actor’s burly physique, Heston displays a stunning lack of
visual imagination. Antony and Cleopatra
is shot roughly in the style of the leaden ’50s Biblical epics that first made
Heston a star, even though the flat lighting style and ultra-wide compositions
of the ’50s had become boring clichés by the early ’70s. Additionally, Heston
took erratic liberties with the text. (He’s credited as the principal
screenwriter.) Heston excised a huge swath of the play’s opening passages,
making it impossible to track how Antony and Cleopatra became involved—and yet
he retained massive speeches that could easily have been trimmed, notably
Cleopatra’s final monologue.

And while Heston delivers basically competent
results with intimate scenes, since the mostly British supporting cast is adept
at handling Shakespeare’s language, the battle scenes are laughably disjointed
and old-fashioned. Damning the whole enterprise to mediocrity is the casting of
Neil as Cleopatra. While she’s attractive and skillful, she’s nowhere near
magical enough to persuade viewers of her character’s power to change the
course of history, and her pale English features seem ridiculous whenever she occupies
the same frame as dark-skinned extras.

Saturday, September 20, 2014

During his opening remarks
at the 1972 Wattsax Music Festival, an all-day concert designed to celebrate
black pride on the seventh anniversary of the Watts riots, politician/preacher
Jesse Jackson captured the moment with his typical rhyming flair: “We have
shifted from ‘burn, baby, burn’ to ‘learn, baby, learn.’” In that spirit, the festival—commemorated
in this excellent documentary, which was released a year after the event took
place—featured uplifting messages about community, love, and respect. And yet Wattstax director Mel Stuart also widened
his focus to address some of the issues that provoked the Watts riots in the
first place. At regular intervals during the movie, Stuart cuts to incendiary
funnyman Richard Pryor providing irreverent comedy, as well as thoughtful
commentary. (Pryor’s material was filmed after the concert.) For instance,
Pryor does several hard-hitting minutes on the eternal quandary of the LAPD’s
trigger-happy attitude toward black suspects.

These combative moments mesh
surprisingly well with such soothing scenes as the Staple Singers performing
“Respect Yourself” onstage at the Los Angeles Coliseum during the festival.
Combined with Stuart’s documentary footage of everyday life in Watts—much of
which is cleverly juxtaposed with music—all of the elements coalesce into a mosaic about race in America circa the early ’70s. In fact,
many of the film’s best scenes feature ordinary men and women speaking
casually—but passionately—about the indignities they suffer. In one memorable
sequence, several men recall the first time they were called “niggers,”
pointedly describing the explanations their parents offered when asked about
the hateful word. (One of the man-on-the-street interviewees is actor Ted Lange, who
later played the bartender on The Love
Boat.)

Yet the music, of course, is the main attraction. Since the concert
was sponsored by Stax Records, many icons of ’70s black music—from James Brown
to the entire Motown roster—are conspicuously absent. Nonetheless, the onstage
lineup makes for a varied and vibrant mix. The Bar-Kays tear through their swaggering
funk number “Son of Shaft,” Luther Ingram sings a heartfelt “If Loving You Is
Wrong, I Don’t Want to Be Right,” Jimmy Jones represents the gospel genre with
“Someone Greater Than I,” Albert King lays down two slinky Delta blues numbers,
and Rufus Thomas gets the crowd going with his novelty number “Do the Funky
Chicken.” Funkmaster General Issac Hayes closes the evening with an epic
reading of his Oscar-winning “Theme from Shaft,” as well as the softer number
“Soulsville,” which suits the peace-and-love mood of the event. (As one
concertgoer says succinctly when asked for his reaction: “Like, shit, the whole
thing is going on.”)

Thanks to Stuart’s holistic approach to depicting the
festival and its larger context, thanks to the great tunes from Stax artists,
and thanks to remarkable editing by David Blewitt, David Newhouse, and Robert
K. Lambert, a unique historical moment was preserved in a suitably unique
fashion.

Friday, September 19, 2014

Apparently, making a cheap
blaxploitation rip-off of the risqué Warren Beatty hit Shampoo (1975) was a more challenging endeavor than one might have
expected. To be fair, Shampoo is only
nominally about a straight hairdresser who lets other men think he’s gay so he
can discreetly screw his female clients, since the complex movie’s real themes
are related to ambition, male identity, and politics. Nonetheless, throwing the
word “black” in front of the previous film’s title would seem to give Black Shampoo cowriter-director Greydon
Clark license to tell a simple story about a black stud who wields a blow dryer
while servicing rich white ladies. And, for a while, it seems as if that’s
exactly the picture Clark is making. The first 30 minutes of Black Shampoo comprise pure softcore,
with abundant full-frontal nudity and many feeble attempts at raunchy humor. Muscular John Daniels stars as “Mr. Jonathan,” a black Beverly Hills
hairdresser who leaves his clients satisfied with more than their coiffures.

When
the movie’s “plot” kicks into gear, however, the tone of the picture abruptly
changes. Mr. Jonathan’s beautiful receptionist, Brenda (Tanya Boyd), used to be
romantically involved with a gangster, so the gangster sends thugs to Mr.
Jonathan’s shop and intimidates Brenda into returning to him. Yet Brenda
actually loves Mr. Jonathan, so she steals an incriminating ledger from the
gangster, sparking a war between the gangster and the hairdresser. (And if any
of this is meant to be satirical, the nuance got lost somewhere along the way.) By
the time the movie lurches to a
conclusion 83 sluggish minutes after it began, Black Shampoo has inexplicably transformed from a would-be sex
comedy to an ultraviolent action picture. During the finale, Mr. Jonathan
impales a dude with a chainsaw, skewers another fellow with a billiard cue, and
watches as one of his sidekicks takes out a villain with an axe to the chest.
Blood spurts as freely in these scenes as sudsy water does in the earlier
scenes. Oh, and in one particularly gruesome moment, a poor guy gets a red-hot
curling iron jammed up his—well, you get the idea.

Adding to the disjointed
nature of the picture is the fact that Clark’s directorial style seems to
completely shift midway through Black
Shampoo. The first half is borderline incompetent, with inept actors
fumbling through pointless scenes—there’s a long romantic montage filled with clichéd
images, as well as a long montage of Mr. Jonathan driving around Los Angeles
while he looks for Brenda, and the film periodically uses solarized
freeze-frames as transitions because Clark obviously forgot to shoot proper
in-camera edit points. Yet once the bullets start flying, Clark reveals a
minor skill for staging action, and flashes of real humor slip into the mix.
(For instance, a flamboyantly gay hairdresser rebounds from an injury by
wearing a chic scarf around his gigantic neck brace.) All of this is enough to
give any viewer whiplash, and the only reason Black Shampoo doesn’t feel like a fever dream of gore and nudity
and sex is that the movie’s pacing is laboriously slow.

Thursday, September 18, 2014

While the low-budget
creature feature Track of the Moon Beast
is so idiotic that it was pilloried by the gang at Mystery Science Theater 3000, I must confess that I’m a sucker for
pictures that rip off the tragic storyline of The Wolf Man (1941). Furthermore, because Track of the Moon Beast is so shamelessly derivative, it almost makes
sense, and coherence is more than one can usually expect from grade-Z ’70s
horror. That said, the list of unintentionally hilarious things in Track of the Moon Beast is lengthy.
First and foremost, there’s the origin story of the titular monster. While
sitting under the night sky in the Southwest one evening with his new
girlfriend, mineral specialist Paul Carlson (Chase Cordell) gets hit in the
head by a falling meteorite. Part of the object gets stuck in his head and starts
to deteriorate. This makes him radioactive (or something), so his DNA fuses
with that of his giant pet lizard, and whenever the moon comes out, Paul turns
into what another character repeatedly calls a “demon lizard monster.” And
since the story is set in the Southwest, there’s a Native American angle—replacing
the gypsy angle in The Wolf Man—so Paul’s
Navajo buddy conveniently explains an ancient Indian myth that predicted the
appearance of the “demon lizard monster.” Amid this silliness, Paul creates
bloody mayhem while in his critter guise, slashing people to death and ripping
limbs off unsuspecting victims. Director Richard Ashe demonstrates basic
competence at designing shots, but he’s hopeless with actors, so the
performances in Track of the Moon Beast
range from embarrassing to nonexistent. Cordell and his leading lady, Leigh
Drake, are completely wooden, while Gregorio Sala, as the Navajo sidekick,
delivers lines with cartoonish intensity. Speaking of cartoons, Track of the Moon Beast was cowritten by
comic-book legend Bill Finger, who co-created Batman with writer Bob Kane.

Wednesday, September 17, 2014

Formulaic, predictable,
and shot on a meager budget, the made-for-TV war picture Carter’s Army, often marketed by the alternate title Black Brigade, is nothing special from a
cinematic perspective. However, because the movie features several noteworthy
black actors, including future box-office heavyweights Richard Pryor and Billy Dee
Williams, Carter’s Army is enjoyable as
a sort of all-star African-American riff on The
Dirty Dozen. Set in 1944 Germany, the exceedingly simplistic movie revolves
around U.S. Army Captain Beau Carter (Stephen Boyd), a racist southerner given the
thankless task of capturing a heavily guarded dam from the Nazis. Unfortunately for
Carter, the only squad available to assist him is an all-black unit that’s
never seen combat. Working reluctantly with the squad’s formidable commander, African-American
Lieutenant Edward Wallace (Robert Hooks), Carter leads six enlisted men on the
mission even though it’s likely to end in tragic failure. Along the way, the
born-and-bred cracker learns to respect black people because of the bravery the
soldiers demonstrate and because he witnesses the everyday humiliation the men
suffer at the hands of fellow Americans.

Not a single frame of Carter’s Army will catch viewers by
surprise, and in fact, some scenes are a bit hard to take seriously because the
forests of Germany look suspiciously like the high-desert woods above Palm
Springs. (One could never accuse TV kingpin Aaron Spelling, who cowrote and
coproduced this project, of overspending on location photography.) In lieu of a
novel story, what keeps Carter’s Army
lively is the cast.

Moses Gunn appears as a professor suffering wartime indignities
with grace, Pryor plays a soldier so afraid of fighting that he attempts
desertion, Glynn Turman portrays a young man keeping a journal of the
action-packed war that he wishes he could tell the folks back home he’s
fighting, and Williams plays a tough guy from Harlem whose racial anger matches
the intensity of Carter’s bigotry. Also in the mix are gentle giant Rosie
Grier, the NFL star-turned-actor, and the stalwart Hooks (Trouble Man), who lends gravitas to the role of the squad’s leader.
This being a Hollywood movie of a certain time, of course, the title character
is a white guy whose journey to enlightenment is portrayed as having more narrative
value than the lives of the black men around him. Veteran big-screen stud Boyd
delivers adequate work as Carter, complete with a litany of disgusted facial
expressions and an amusingly soupy accent.

Tuesday, September 16, 2014

Offering a nostalgic but
tart look at the period in media history when theatrical newsreels gave way to
television coverage, the handsomely crafted Newsfront
also includes a litany of important Australian events from the
years 1948 to 1956. A similar story could have been told about nearly any developed nation, but the rugged Australian setting
fits this specific narrative about an old-fashioned cinematographer who resists
change. In addition to making his feature debut, Aussie director
Philip Noyce cowrote the script, which dramatizes social and technological
changes by juxtaposing the experiences of stubborn Len Maguire with those of his comparatively easygoing
younger brother, Frank. Yet the Len/Frank saga is just one of many storylines.

Deliberately episodic, since actual Australian newsreels are woven into the story, Newsfront unfolds like a soap opera,
with the staffers at two competing newsreel agencies
crisscrossing over time. Len evolves from the cocky daredevil who’ll do
anything for a shot to the embittered veteran who gets scolded for playing it
safe. Along the way, he changes wives, loses friends to tragedy, and proudly supports
the Communist Party. He’s a thorny choice for a central character. Although Newsfront features several action scenes depicting the risks Len and his peers take to capture footage, the
most dynamic vignettes actually occur in mixing studios. It’s fascinating
to watch the newsreel teams create soundtracks live—as a director gives cues by
hand, a sound technician adjusts the music score and a voice-over
actor delivers the purple prose for which newsreels were famous. Newsreel camera
technology was the same as that used for fiction films, but this particular
mixing process was unique to the newsreel medium.

Generally speaking, the
workplace scenes in Newsfront are
more effective than the domestic bits, partially because Noyce employs such an
understated style, and partially because leading man Bill Hunter (as Len) is
supremely stoic. Hunter is cast well, seeing as how Len’s first marriage becomes a casualty
of his remoteness, but Hunter never generates much emotional engagement.
Costars Chris Haywood (as Len’s apprentice) and Gerard Kennedy (as Len’s
brother) are more accessible, and the whole cast is quite good on a
technical level. A pre-stardom Bryan Brown plays a small role, and Wendy Hughes offers a striking presence as the woman who
gets caught between Frank and Len.

Boasting consistently impressive production
values—a sequence involving a flood looks amazing—Newsfront is quite watchable
despite its clinical quality and ho-hum ending. Additionally, the movie is noteworthy
because it earned a slew of Australian Film Institute awards (the Aussie equivalent to the Oscars),
and because it marked a pivotal moment in Noyce’s career. Although the director
didn’t achieve a true international breakthrough until helming the taut Nicole
Kidman thriller Dead Calm (1989),
Noyce subsequently directed numerous big-budget films, including a pair of Jack
Ryan adventures and the twin 2002 triumphs Rabbit-Proof
Fence and The Quiet American.

Monday, September 15, 2014

An all-too-common
storytelling technique among ’70s filmmakers catering to the drive-in market
involved taking elements that worked in other low-budget movies and jamming
them together for maximum pulpy impact, even if narrative dissonance resulted.
As a case in point, the action thriller Bonnie’s
Kids includes ingénues, lesbians, mobsters, horny rednecks, sleazy
photographers, a heist story right out of an old film noir, and lurid scenes
that could be generously described as attempts at sex comedy. Based on sheer
percentages of screen time, Bonnie’s Kids
is a crime movie by default, but there’s a lot of cinematic wandering amid the
film’s 105 undisciplined minutes. And yet as awful and sloppy as the preceding
description makes Bonnie’s Kids
sound, it’s not a completely terrible movie. The performances by leading lady
Tiffany Bolling and supporting actor Alex Rocco are tasty, the plotting is
relatively intricate, some scenes contain a modicum of wit, and there’s more
than enough sex and violence to keep the viewer’s reptile brain engaged.

The
story starts in the deep south, where sexy sisters Ellie Mae (Tiffany Bolling)
and Myra (Robin Mattson) live with their drunken lout of a stepfather because
their mother, Bonnie, died two years previous. After the stepfather tries to
molest Myra, older sister Ellie Mae unloads a shotgun into his chest, and the sisters flee to L.A., where Bonnie’s brother is a businessman. Before long, Myra
gets romantically involved with a predatory lesbian, while Ellie Mae gets roped
into transporting a package across state lines for gangsters, which brings her
into the orbit of fellow courier Larry (Steve Sandor). Once Ellie Mae seduces
Larry, she persuades him to open the mysterious package they’re carrying. It’s
full of cash, so Ellie Mae talks Larry into running away with her—and the money.
Predictably, the Mafia doesn’t the theft lightly, so gunmen Digger (Timothy
Brown) and Eddy (Rocco) are sent to recover the loot.

The first half of Bonnie’s Kids is scattershot, but the
second half works fairly well as a lovers-on-the-run melodrama. There’s even
some real tension toward the end, despite Ellie Mae’s annoying tendency to
shout, “What are we going to do?” every five seconds. Writer-director Arhtur
Marks, who cut his teeth directing episodes of Perry Mason and later made several lively blaxploitation flicks,
keeps the pace brisk and seizes every opportunity to showcase the curvaceous
figures of starlets. One can do a lot better in the world of tacky ’70s
exploitation pictures than Bonnie’s Kids,
but one can also do a lot worse, because hints of real filmmaking periodically
emerge from the boobs-and-bullets muck.